Hatch Cottage

The experimental Hatch Cottage was designed by Jack Hall in 1960 for Robert Hatch, an editor of The Nation and his wife Ruth, a painter. The family occupied the cottage until 2008 when ownership reverted to the National Park Service. CCMHT received a lease in 2012 and finished restoration in spring 2013. Since then the cottage has hosted four artist/scholar residencies. All the original furniture and artwork has been re-installed by the Hatch family.

It’s hard to describe the setting of the Hatch Cottage, with it’s panoramic view of the bay, perched on the edge of a kettle hole, with a vernal pool below, and it’s untrammeled west-facing hillside which takes in the sunset over the water. Since it’s in the National Seashore, surrounding development has been frozen since its construction. The cottage itself is a matrix of cubes. Some are single and some combine to make bigger shared spaces. The cubes are connected by outdoor decks that seem to dematerialize due to the decking being laid on edge; making the whole seem to hover a few feet above the ground. The rooms open and close with shutters of different sizes to regulate temperature, air and sun. There are two rooms w/ queen sized beds, a bunk room, one bath, a lovely path to a generally un-occupied bay beach and access to many trails through the woods.

The house has three bedrooms, two with queen-sized beds and a small bunk room with two twin bunks. One full bathroom plus an outdoor shower. No internet or heat.

John Hughes Hall was born in 1916 into a well-to-do family on Long Island. He graduated from Princeton University in 1935. Between ‘35 and ‘46 he traveled, wrote for newspapers and served in the army.

He first came to Wellfleet in the late ‘30s, taking to the landscape immediately which he described as ‘manageable’. He bought 180 acres and a very old farm compound on Bound Brook Island for $3,500 from Katie Dos Passos, wife of the writer John Dos Passos.

Jack Hall and his close friends, Jack Phillips and Hayden Walling were the three self-taught designer/builders in Wellfleet who created a welcoming environment for the European modernists when they arrived in the mid ‘40s. In 1946, Hall started his own design/build practice in Wellfleet which he continued intermittently until he retired. Projects included the Peter’s Hill Restaurant building, the Hatch Cottage, and many studios, renovations and additions.

Beginning in 1956, he worked for a number of firms in New York City including Nardin and Radoczy, Tom Lee Ltd., Hughes & Hood and George Nelson and Company.

His study of industrial design led to work on a number of major traveling exhibitions for the US Information Service including Graphics USA in ’63 with Ivan Chermayeff (son of Serge Chermayeff). While with Hughes and Hood he designed many showrooms in the United States and Europe for the Fieldcrest Mills Company.

In 1959 he spent four months in Moscow helping to assemble ‘The Jungle Gym,’ George Nelson’s contribution to the American National Exhibition. He worked with Charles and Ray Eames on a light fixture in 1964 and designed a café table for the Museum of Modern Art’s restaurant.

Hall taught at Parsons School of Design’s Industrial Design Department in 1957-58 and also had a private architectural practice in New York, executing many townhouse renovations (including one for his friends, Serge and Barbara Chermayeff).

Although when Hall first came to Wellfleet he had an old Rolls Royce and was sometimes referred to as the ‘Squire of Bound Brook,’ he become a beloved fixture in town, especially after moving there full time in the early ‘70s.

He was a serious lifelong painter and writer. Hall’s last wife, Marty, was close to Connie Breuer and would often sing at parties while Connie accompanied on jazz piano. Jack Hall died in the winter of 2003 in Wellfleet.

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Kugel/Gips House

Designed by Charlie Zehnder in 1970, the Kugel/Gips house was abandoned for eleven years and in an advanced state of decay until CCMHT obtained a lease in 2009, and started restoration. Since then it has hosted over 16 artist/ scholatr residencies.

The house hovers above a secluded Northeast Pond (looking across to Great Pond) with no other building in sight. The massive masonry base anchors the broad cantilevering decks and eaves out into the landscape. Zehnder’s interest in Frank Lloyd Wright as well as intimate understanding of the Outer Cape’s terrain and climate are clearly seen, with the plan pinwheeling around a massive hearth and stretching out to take advantage of views and the prevailing breeze. There are three bedrooms, two baths and the ocean beach is a five minute walk. Furniture and art in the house has been collected and donated to help contexturalize the architecture.

The house has three bedrooms, one king sized bed and two queens, two full bathrooms. Fairly good internet and land line phone. Also has heat.

Charlie Zehnder’s father was a successful physician with an office in Newark, New Jersey. Zehnder attended the University of Virginia, where he spent one long evening with a group of other students talking with Frank Lloyd Wright, an event that had a life-long impact.

He received a degree in industrial design from The Rhode Island School of Design and immediately after leaving the Marine Corps in 1957, came to the Cape to help his friend, Ray Brock build a house in Truro. Settling in Wellfleet, he bought some land on the bay side and started an architectural practice which ultimately produced over fifty, highly original houses on the Outer Cape. He was also one of the prime movers behind building the local drive-in movie theater on what was once an asparagus field.

Zehnder creatively cross-pollinated with the prominent Modernists who had settled in Wellfleet before him while maintaining his own idiosyncratic approach to architecture. Aside from Wright, he was very influenced by Thomas Jefferson (both as an architect and inventor), and the geometric, concrete bunker fortifications at Normandy. His restless experimentation with geometries and materials led to a body of work, remarkable for its intimate relationship with the Cape’s terrain, climate and creative lifestyle. Most of his clients were artists and writers and many became close friends for many years.

If he had money he would often buy a car on the spot, and sometimes give it away, just as spontaneously to someone who needed it. Zehnder loved cars, boats and airplanes because he thought they were designed honestly. He died in Wellfleet in 1985.

Weidlinger House

Designed by pioneering engineer Paul Weidlinger and built in 1953, this house has been vacant and in danger of demolition since the late 1990s. In 2012 CCMHT obtained a lease and has begun restoration which will conclude by summer 2014.

From a boat on the pond, Paul Weidlinger’s summer house looks like a white box floating high above the ground. Like his friend Breuer’s house, across the pond, it serves as a hovering platform for viewing nature. Anchored on concrete piers at the higher end of the slope, the house shoots out over stilts of increasing height until it is suspended in midair for a commanding view.

In another cue from Breuer, Weidlinger visibly divided the house into public and private sections. The bedroom zone has fairly enclosed stud-walls, while the large living area, is an open post-and-beam structure with facade sections that are fully glazed or fully solid surrounded on three sides by a shaded veranda accessed from a Corbusian ramp. Steel X bracing—soon to be repainted its original yellow—carry the structural forces to the ground. Standing like a 3-D structural diagram, the house offers a glimpse into the thought process of one of the twentieth century’s great structural designers. There are three bedrooms and one bath, access to ponds and a short walk to the ocean beach.

The house has three bedrooms, two queen sized and a twin that folds out to a queen, one full bathroom. Slow to decent internet. Also has heat.

Paul Weidlinger was born in Budapest, Hungary on Dec. 22, 1914. He was educated at the Technical Institute in Brno, Czechoslovakia and at the Swiss Polytechnic Institute. Following graduation in 1937 he apprenticed with both Moholy-Nagy and Le Corbusier. He left Europe in 1939 to work and teach in La Paz, Bolivia. He arrived in the United States in 1943 and started his own practice five years later.

Recognized as an innovative structural engineer, he attracted the attention of many major architects of the twentieth century. Some of his projects include Yale’s Beinecke Library Gordon Bunshaft, the hyperbolic-faced St. Francis de Sales church in Michigan with his close friend, Marcel Breuer and the Reader’s Digest Building in Tokyo with Antonin Raymond. He also collaborated with artists such as Picasso, Dubuffet and Noguchi on large outdoor sculptures.

His interest in the dynamic response of structures led to his revolutionary work on blast and earthquake proofing of buildings. He served as special consultant to the US State Department in the design of Embassies, and his firm was the first approached to analyze the structural failure of the World Trade Center after 9/11.

He was an adjunct professor at MIT and Harvard University, and was a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of ASCE and ACI and the recipient of the Brown Medal by the Franklin Institute, among other awards.

He first came to Wellfleet at the invitation of Breuer, who persuaded him to buy land from Jack Phillips near Breuer’s house. It is documented that Breuer, Gropius and Le Corbusier all gave him advice on the design of his summer house. Le Corbusier reportedly opined, “don’t pave the driveway.”

Paul Weidlinger died in 1999, still pushing the boundaries of engineering.

Kohlberg House

The Kohlberg House was built by Luther Crowell, a local designer/builder descended from a long line of early Cape Cod ship captains, like Elkanah Crowell of Dennis. Though not trained as an architect Crowell emulated the other local modernists in the over 100 houses he designed and built in Wellfleet.

The house, which is now eligible for the National Registry of Historic Places, was the home of Lawrence Kohlberg, the prominent Harvard professor who pioneered a theory of moral development still taught today. He did much of his writing in the house surrounded by his family and many other prominent thinkers and academics who lived near by, in modern houses built in the same era.

The simple but elegant house sits on top one of the highest dunes on the Outer Cape with an expansive view of the Atlantic. The main floor is an open plan, with all the public spaces and a study/bedroom. Two other bedrooms and full bath are in the walk-out, lower level.

The large lot also includes an A-frame cottage which was built in the 70s for the teenage kids and overflow guests. This has a bedroom, sleeping loft, kitchenette and bathroom.

It’s a short walk to Newcomb Hollow beach and a nearby path leads to the secluded Spectacle Pond.

The house was in an advanced state of decay having been vacant and exposed to the weather since around 2001. CCMHT started restoration in October 2018, to be completed in June 2019.

The main house lower level has two bedrooms w queen sized beds, a small room w a twin plus a full bath with tub.The main floor has a queen sized bed with a small half bath. These are separated from living room by a heavy curtain.Has heat, AC and outdoor shower.The A-frame cottage has one bedroom w queen sized bed and loft w two twins, a full bath plus outdoor shower. Also has a kitchenette.

The Kohlberg house was built in 1960 by Luther Crowell, a local designer who descended from a long line of Cape Cod ship captains such as Elkanah Crowell of Dennis. He was self taught but collaborated with some of the local modern luminaries such as Olav Hammarstrom. He also developed a pre-fab house design based on the popular Tech-Built houses, several of which are in Wellfleet. At one time he owned large swathes of land in Wellfleet and all together he is thought to have built over 200 houses in town for which he acted as a developer, designer and builder.

The house was commissioned by Lawrence Kohlberg, the prominent Harvard and University of Chicago professor / psychologist, who pioneered a theory of human moral development, which is still very influential in the field.
He did much of his writing in the house surrounded by many other prominent thinkers and academics who lived nearby in modern houses, built around the same time.